


The Elephant's War

by DisaLanglois



Category: Independence Day (1996), Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Africa, Africa doesn't get enough love in fandom, Alien Invasion, Aliens, Fictional African country, Gen, Mind Manipulation, Mind Meld, Not Fluff, Not Romance, Telepathy, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-18
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7368739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DisaLanglois/pseuds/DisaLanglois
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of how the African warlord fought his ten-year telepathic ground war against the ship-wrecked alien infantry.  </p><p>Complete!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Republic of Umbutu obviously doesn’t exist, so I played fast and loose with the Great Lakes Region and gave it a chunk of Western Uganda. 
> 
> Warning: author has never been to Uganda, and has flicked off this fic with very little research. Names, honorifics and culture of Umbutu are a hodgepodge borrowed from different places and languages.

**2 July1996**

**Republic of Umbutu, Central Africa**

The sun blazed down over the valley from a clear blue sky.   The breeze tousled the heads of the dry grass, blowing from Lake Victoria over the rolling hills of Umbutu.  Long-horned Ankole cattle grazed, as cattle had done here for thousands of years.  Young boys lazed in the grass watching them, as herdboys had lain around watching cattle for thousands of years. 

Two of the boys were older than the rest.  The two of them were lounging on an outcrop of warm stone, a little way from their juniors. 

“What do you think it is going to be like?”  Siyamthanda Umbutu asked his twin.  “Becoming a man, I mean?”

Dikembe spat the pit of the berry expertly into the nearest bush.  “You’re not worried are you, _ndugu?”_ he asked his brother. 

“Well, no, not really,” Siya said, but the hesitation was there in his voice. 

“I’m not worried,” Dikembe said.   “I am ready to become a man!  I am tired of all _this.”_   He gestured with his hand at the grazing cattle. 

“All this?” Siya teased his brother.  “You used to love _this.”_  

“That was when we were only boys, _ndugu!”_ Dikembe said, loftily.  “Herding cattle is for boys.  But now we are almost men!  I want to be a man, now!”  He flopped over onto his back on the warm stone.    

There was a silence.  Dikembe could almost hear his twin’s thoughts.  Insects buzzed in the grass.  The big red cattle moved through the grass.  Two of the younger boys started to fight, wrestling with each other just downhill, and the rest of the herdboys joined in, whooping and jeering.  The Umbutu twins ignored them, as beneath the notice of two almost-men. 

“You are braver than I am, Dika,” Siyamthanda said, his voice almost a murmur. 

“Huh?” Dikembe said, propping himself up on his elbow. 

“You are braver than I am.”  Siyamthanda’s eyes were fixed on the distant cattle.  “Sometimes I think _you_ should have been born first.  The ancestors made a mistake when they chose me to be the eldest.” 

“You are smarter than I am, Siya.  You always get better marks in school!” 

School seemed a long way away.  They were back in their ancestral land now, herding their father’s cattle in the time-honoured tradition while they waited for their initiation school to begin.  Some things could not be changed, even now in 1996.  They were the only sons of the chief of the B’Umbutu, the biggest tribe in the tiny Republic of Umbutu, but they were not yet men.  There were things they had to learn, secrets of their ancestors that the older men still had to teach them – and you could not learn those secrets properly in Mbarara, in a nice house, with electricity and ceiling fans and TV. 

“Maybe.”  Siya didn’t seem convinced. 

“You are smarter than I am.  And you understand people better.   People _like_ you.   You’re going to make a _great_ king one day, Siya.  The ancestors don’t make mistakes.  You’re going to inherit from Baba, and you’re going to be War Elephant.”

 _“Half_ a War Elephant,” Siya said, grinning.  “You’ll have to be the other half.” 

“You’ll have to become a man first!” Dikembe said. 

Dikembe spotted their friend Jean-Baptiste walking through the long grass toward them. 

He sat up sharply. 

“Jean-Baptiste, how goes it with you?”  he called, so Siya knew someone was approaching.  Jean-Baptiste was a Tutsi, and no B’Umbutu could admit feeling doubts in front of a Tutsi.  

Jean-Baptiste had come to Umbutu two years ago with his parents, after Rwanda tore itself apart.  Dikembe’s father, the War Elephant of the B’Umbutu, had decided to let the Tutsi people stay – and the elected president agreed with the king, and sent the country's tiny army to stop the wrath of the Hutu from chasing the Tutsi refugees across Umbutu’s border. 

“Remember always,” the War Elephant told his sons,  “ _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu…_ A person is a person through other people… Never forget that, never.”

“I’m hungry,” Jean-Baptiste said, stopping just below their perch, crossing his arms, and staring up at the twins.

“When are you not hungry?” 

“When I’m looking at your sister,” Jean-Baptiste said, quickly. 

 _“Hayi!”_ Dikembe said.  He jumped down off the rock to give chase.

For a moment, he thought the rumbling under his feet was the fault of his sandals slipping on the coppery stone.  He stopped quickly, and realized that the tremors underfoot were real. 

Jean-Baptiste stopped, and stared at him.  “What is that?” he asked. 

“Look!” Siyamthanda shouted.  He was standing up on the lump of stone.   His arm was raised, pointing at the sky. "Look! What is that?" 

Dikembe turned, staring across the valley. 

There was something in the sky.  It looked like a storm cloud, racing along the horizon, bringing rain to the Great Rift, but no storm moved like that, and no storm billowed with fire.  It looked like an oncoming bush fire – only hanging over the land, inverted in mid-air. 

And it was moving faster than any cloud Dikembe had ever seen.  It was moving across the sky as if it was coming straight for Dikembe. 

The cattle had all stopped, staring at the vision in the sky, and then almost as one they whirled and stampeded.  A moment later the air was filled with the rumble of hooves and the bellowing of frightened steers, and a thick dust cloud was pounded up from a hundred sets of hooves. 

“Jump up!  Jump up!” Dikembe shouted to the other boys, and they all scrambled up onto the outcrop of stones to safety.  There was no stopping the cattle now – they were pounding away in blind panic, and they would flatten any small boy who tried to head them off. 

And Dikembe couldn’t blame them, either.  He was a man – _almost_ a man – and a B’Umbutu, but the courage of his ancestors had deserted him as he stared frozen up at the sky. 

The thing cast an immense shadow across the green valley.  The shadow rolled across the land, reaching their rocky outcrop, and cast a chill over Dikembe’s skin.  The huge shape filled the sky, horizon to horizon, and it was still coming.  Not crashing – not a meteorite – not falling, but sliding on and on and on overhead, until the sunlight came back on the other side.

* * *

 

There was no sense in running after their lost cattle.  Nobody with an ounce of curiosity would fret about missing cattle, even prized Ankole cattle,  at a time like _this!_   Siyamthanda led the boys out of the valley, running as fast as they could.  They ran in single file down the valley paths, grass brushing against bare legs, down from the hills and into the town.   

 They arrived into pandemonium on the street.  People were panicking already.  The traders in the market were stuffing their goods back into their woven plastic refugee-bags, and dismantling the iron scaffolds of their stalls as fast as they could drop.  Dikembe had to jink out of the way of a steel pole falling before it landed on his head.

The other boys ran for their homes, but Siyamthanda headed straight for their father’s compound.  Their father’s bodyguard saw them coming, and opened the gate to let them in.   They ran through the dirt _kraal_ outside, and in through the kitchen door. 

“Baba!” Siya called to their father. 

“He’s in the front room,”  their half-sister Nangoma shouted to them as they passed the kitchen.    

“Did you see it?” Dikembe asked. 

“Of course I saw it!  Everyone saw it!”

The twins found their father surrounded by the village’s elders, in deep discussion.  They seemed worried, grey heads nodding.  Old Uncle Mulumba was there, too, arthritic hands knotted around the handle of his crutch.  Uncle Matthew was trying to get the TV to work, but the signal was garbled.  Dikembe could see a snowy picture of a white lady and a CNN logo, but the picture was a watery wobble and the sound was a hiss of static. 

Their father the War Elephant was sitting in the middle of the debate, as the stuffiest  and most self-important old men in the town tried to agree on the nature of something _none_ of them had ever seen before.   

Dikembe and Siyamthanda filed into the room.  Their father was surrounded by their elders, so they couldn’t gallop up to him and shout about what they’d seen.  They were not yet men, to have anything to say, but not quite children to be exiled to the women’s half of the house.  For now, they were ignored. 

“People are afraid, _bwana,_ ” someone said to their father.  “No-one has ever seen anything like this before.” 

“There’s nothing to worry about,” someone else said.  “It’s the Americans…”

“It’s always the Americans.”

 _“If_ it’s not the Congolese again…”

“You think Mobutu Sese Seko has one of _those_ in his pocket?” someone scoffed. 

“Ah, but Mobutu _would_ waste money to build something like that.”

“Shut up.  It’s the Americans.  Weren’t they talking for years and years about missiles in space?  The Americans went to the Moon.  If it is in the sky, it must be Americans.”

“It’s not Americans,” Siyamthanda blurted out.  “It’s aliens, Baba!” 

Every adult eye turned on them, critically. 

“Stop!”  their father ordered in the sudden silence. 

“Your sons watch too much Western TV, _bwana,”_ old Uncle Mulumba said.  His great age gave him licence to say things that others could only think to their king. 

“I intend dealing with that, _mzee_ Mulumba,” their father said, glaring at his sons and then turning his head away. 

Mama Alice, their father’s senior wife, came into the room.  “I phoned Kampala, and I talked to Museveni’s wife, _bwana,_ ” she said to her husband. 

“Is it _theirs?”_  

“No.  Janet says it came from outer space,” she said. 

“Outer space?”

“The Americans picked it up coming beyond the Moon.  It came from outer space.  There are others over all the biggest cities – London, Berlin, Moscow, New York…” 

 “Aliens,” Dikembe whispered.  He looked at his brother. 

“Like the X-Files!”  Siya whispered back, excited. 

“Janet said there’s another one standing over Lagos,” their father’s senior wife said.  “Just standing there, like they’re waiting for something to happen.” 

“Maybe they are waiting for us to talk to them?” 

Everyone looked at their father. 

That was something Dikembe remembered afterwards.  Everyone looked at their father.  Decisions had to be made when the people looked for decisions, whether the War Elephant knew what to do or not. 

“The War Elephant will go and look at this ship,” their father declared. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

_**2 July 1996** _

 

Siyamthanda and Dikembe tacked onto the tail of the group, and Jean-Baptiste followed them.  A small convoy of Landrovers and Jeeps left the town, driving west into the sunset, in the direction that the huge ship had flown overhead.  As they drove into the darkness, they passed others heading in the opposite direction.  The farms and villages that bordered the reserve were emptying as people fled instinctively, seeking the reassurance of the bigger towns. From people fleeing they learned that the ship had landed in the Rift Valley Reserve. 

The Rift Valley Reserve was the Republic of Umbutu's biggest game reserve.  It was a place of wide open plains, game drives, the Big Five – tourism.  Most tourists flew straight from the airport to the Rift – although there had been very few tourists after Rwanda tore itself apart two years ago.  The tourists were flying to South Africa instead, as if Umbutu and Rwanda were the same place instead of acrimonious neighbours.  

They crossed into the reserve through the main gates, driving through the dark, and followed the headlights of their cars.  The road led them over a crest.  They braked hard, and Dikembe found himself looking down over a wide valley. 

The ship _had_ landed.  It had grown huge legs all around its rim, and now it squatted across the countryside like a huge flat table, blocking out the Milky Way.  It seemed a miracle that those legs did not buckle, collapsing the ship onto the Valley, obliterating all under it.  The lights on the underside glittered like a city in the dark. 

The convoy pulled up on the crest of the hill.  A couple  of game rangers met them, jogging their horses out of the dark, rifles slung over their shoulders.  They dismounted and stood talking to the men, discussing the great ship. 

Dikembe, Siya and Jean-Baptiste jumped out of their father’s car, and stood staring at a changed world.

“How long has it been there?”  the War Elephant asked. 

“It got here this afternoon, but it folded out those legs two hours ago,” the elder game ranger answered. 

“I thought you said they all landed over cities…” the War Elephant said to his senior wife.  

 _“None_ of the others have landed,” Mama Alice said, puzzled.  “The other ships are just hovering in place.” 

“This one has landed,” the War Elephant said.  “And it’s not over any city that I can see, can you?  What is it doing here?”

“Nothing, _bwana,”_ the game ranger said, turning his head to look over his shoulder at the ship, as if he thought it could hear him.  “No-one has come in, no-one has come out.” 

“Why are they here?  What do they want?” 

“They want the same thing outsiders _always_ want, _bwana,”_ old Uncle Mulumba said.  “They’re here to steal our land.”

“Maybe they’re friendly?” Uncle Matthew said. 

“If they were friendly, why would they not have come out and given respectful greetings to _us,_ us who _live_ in this place?" the War Elephant asked.  "No!  They are _not one iota_ more friendly than the British were!  This ship is _not_ here for any reason we will like.  We attack them before they can attack us!” 

“Shouldn’t we wait, and see what the other ships do first?”

“No.  We attack!  Too often we have been attacked by strangers.  They come here, they bring war, they invade our land!  No more!  Call the President.  And General Zuluka.  Tell him I am summoning the _askaris_ of the B’Umbutu, as is my right.  We attack as soon as we are assembled!”

“Yes, _bwana!”_ the game ranger said, enthusiastically, spinning away. 

“Mama Alice – call the Ugandans.  Tell Museveni this ship is behaving differently, and that’s important.  Tell him the B'Umbutu are going to attack!” 

“Something’s happening, something’s happening!” Jean-Baptiste cried out, pointing at the ship. 

Dikembe and Siya whirled, aware that everyone else was spinning to look at the same time. 

The ship was moving.  Green light was flowing down from its belly.  What looked like flower petals were unfolding,  revealing a glowing green interior.  It reminded Dikembe of the yolk of an egg, soft and glowing, but a virulent glowing green.  

And as he looked, he saw another strip of light opening on the side of the ship, on the narrow rim.  It looked like a huge door opening – and then he saw tiny black dots flying out from inside the ship. 

“Uh-oh,” murmured Siya.  “That does not look…” 

The dots were skimming horizontally across the valley now, fast as fighter jets - aircraft.  He saw one swooping in his direction, as if it was coming straight for him.  He saw it swooping low, and suddenly darts of green were strafing out in front of it as it flew low over a cluster of buildings.  The darts flew down at the ground, and a wall of explosions suddenly bloomed against the night.  He saw debris whirled into the air on the fireballs, silhouetted against the flames, and the alien aircraft pulled up and screamed away. 

“They blew up the ranger station!”  someone screamed.  “There are _people_ in there!” 

“Back!” the War Elephant shouted.  “Get back!  We are exposed here!  Back in the cars!” 

Even as Dikembe felt Siya grab his shoulder and yank him backwards, he saw a tower of green light slam into the ground from the open flower petals.  Smoke lashed the air.  A great funnel of light was streaming from the belly of the ship to the earth.  The ghastly green glow lit up the whole valley, and cast the underside of the ship into brilliant relief. 

A second later, the earth under his feet began to vibrate viciously. 

Dikembe turned and followed Siya into the back of the Landrover, falling over and in.  The car was put into gear and screamed around in a tight turn, trundling over bushes and shrubs.  Dikembe could hear his father shouting. 

“Drive!” the War Elephant ordered. 

“We must fight them!”

“No!  Look at those weapons!  We cannot stand against them!” 

“We must fight!  We are B’Umbutu!  We are men!  We must show the world that we are not afraid!” 

“No!  Look at those weapons!  When we had spears and the British had rifles we lost our country for a hundred years!  Now we have rifles, but they're useless against those … those light-muskets!  We _must_ fall back, and call for reinforcements!  We need aircraft – missiles – big guns!  Call the South Africans, the Congolese, the Ethiopians – everybody whose number we have.  Tell them Umbutu is under attack!”   

* * *

 

**3 July**

They did not flee all the way back to the War Elephant’s home town, but stopped in a small village.  The inhabitants had already fled at the first tremor through the earth.  The village was not electrified, and the satellite phone in the Landrover was not working suddenly, but Uncle Matthew was sent to the closest telephone to talk to the President.  He came back hurriedly with the news, arriving with the sunrise. 

Dikembe and Siya found themselves listening to a desperate council of war. 

“There is no more doubt,” the War Elephant said.  “We _are_ under attack.” 

“Does the rest of the world _know_ what is happening here?  They need to send help, _bwana!”_  

The War Elephant shook his head.  “Tell them what you heard, Matthew, _tafadhali.”_  

“The rest of the world cannot send help,” Uncle Matthew said.  “There _is_ no help to send.  There is no-one to send it.  What has happened here, happened all over the world.  All the ships attacked at exactly the same time.  London, Paris, New York, Washington, all have been destroyed.” 

“There was another ship over Lagos!” 

“Lagos is gone,” the War Elephant said.  “Destroyed utterly.”

“How can Lagos be _gone?_ ” said _mzee_ Mulumba.  “It’s Lagos!” 

“Lagos is gone,” the War Elephant repeated.  He walked to the window of the little house and looked out at the sunrise, as if he couldn’t bear to face his councillors.  “Lagos is gone.” 

Dikembe looked at Siya, whose eyes were wide.   The idea of a city as huge as Lagos being destroyed was unthinkable.  Dikembe could see the disbelief and shock on every face in the room.   

“That green tower of light that is digging?” Uncle Matthew said.  “They fired one of _those_ on Lagos Island.  When it hit the ground, the air itself caught fire.  All burned; all destroyed.  And as Lagos burned, so did New York, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi… all gone.”

“We are alone.” 

“We are not alone,” the War Elephant said.  He turned from the window.  “No!  Now is the time to stand together!”

“But how?” 

“All of Africa saw what happened to Lagos.  They’re sending aircraft to attack the ships directly – every warplane from every Air Force from Cairo to Cape Town.  Half of the squadrons are flying to Nigeria – the other half are coming _here._   The Americans, the Chinese – they’re all doing the same, even as we speak.  Tomorrow we will see the largest aerial battle in the history of the world…” 

“And what will the B’Umbutu do?” 

“We watch.  We’re the closest people to the ship.  So we observe.  We report. 

“We don’t have radios,” Uncle Matthew said.  “How are we going to communicate without radios?”

“Oh!” _mzee_ Mulumba snorted.  “Radios!  _Since when_ have the people of the Great Lakes needed the white man’s technology to talk at distance?  _Huh?_   Have you forgotten your own culture, young man?  Come!  Let us go and find this village’s drums!” 

The councillors left after hammering out their plans.  They left, going to give their commands to their own clans.  The War Elephant was alone for a moment.  Dikembe and Siya looked at each other.  They stood up from where they had been sitting, and approached their father. 

“Baba?” Dikembe said. 

The War Elephant looked up.  “My boys.  Come here.”  He stood up and reached out his hands. 

Siya and Dikembe walked over, and to their surprise their father put his arms around them both and pressed them close to him.   For a moment he was not the War Elephant, but Ezekiel Umbutu, their father.  He squeezed them both, tightly. 

“I am afraid,” Dikembe said, saying the words that the eldest son Siya could not say. 

Their father sighed, and released them, and as he stepped back Dikembe was shocked to see the look on his father’s face. 

“You are afraid,” his father said.  “And I am afraid.  We are all afraid.  Listen to this moment, my sons.   This is what it means to be brave.  Being brave warriors, and being grown men, is _not_ about parading in the stadium and waving flags on Independence Day.  This feeling inside you right now – _that_ is the spirit of the B’Umbutu.  Feeling what you are feeling now – and _still_ going out to fight – _that_ is what it means to be brave.” 

There was a sudden rumble of noise outside the window, and Dikembe jumped. 

It was a drum, beating hard.  Another drum immediately joined, beating out a complex tattoo.  Dikembe recognised the war beat – the tattoo calling every B’Umbutu who heard it to answer their king’s call to arms.  Anyone who knew the language of the drums would take their own drums out and beat the same rhythm, and the message would travel in minutes.  He had learned the war beat at school; his history teacher had told them that news of the great victory of Khartoum had been heard by drum in Sierra Leone on the very same day…

“Ah,” their father said, satisfied.  “Now, the word goes out.” 

“We want to come with you tomorrow,” Dikembe said. 

Their father frowned.  “I should not have brought you with me,” he said. 

“No, Baba!” Siya protested.  “Don’t send us home!  Let us stay and see what happens!” 

Their father sighed.  “I cannot send you home.  You will be War Elephant one day.  The people have to see you being brave.  I cannot send you home, or everyone will say that the king sends his own sons to safety, and sends other men’s sons to war.  Yes, you will come with me.  Stay close to me, and watch what I do.  And do what Uncle Mulumba tells you.  Hitler’s War was long ago, but _mzee_ Mulumba still knows what he learned …” 

“Yes, Baba,” Dikembe said, eagerly. 

He looked at Siya, and knew that Siya felt what he felt.  Their first war!  He was afraid, but this was going to be their first war!  Now they would see if they had what it took to be men of the B’Umbutu! 

* * *

_**3 July 1996** _

 

The War Elephant retraced his journey the next day, heading back downhill to where the ship had landed in the lowest part of the Great Rift Valley. 

They had not gone far into the reserve, when they came across the elephants. 

Dikembe got out of the car, staring.  He had seen elephants before.  He’d seen dead elephants before, too.  But he’d never seen a whole herd of elephants lying dead before. 

 They were lying dead in a line, as if they had been fleeing as they were shot.  They  lay on their sides, unmoving.  Their great grey bellies were higher than his head, and the bottoms of their flat feet faced him.  They had been discovered by vultures already, but he could tell that the bloody wounds in the elephants’ backs had not been made by the vultures.  The elephant herd had been shot from above. 

All of them, shot down as they fled.    

Dikembe walked all down the line of elephants.  They were the totem animals of the B’Umbutu tribe, and he recognised them all.  The two new babies, born this year.  The young cow Dembe, his favourite.  He saw the herd’s matriarch, wise old Maryam, right at the end of the line, facing the other way from her sisters, as if she had stopped and turned to challenge their attackers before she died. 

They were all here, all twenty, and they were all dead.  Maryam’s trunk seemed to reach out to Dikembe’s feet, where he stood and looked at her, as if she was trying to touch him.  She was already buzzing with flies, and he could smell her blood. 

This tiny country had just one herd of elephants left.  And now there were none.  Only the bull, solitary Mawenzi, was not here. 

“I’ve found the rangers!” Uncle Galabba’s voice broke in.  “Over here!”  

Dikembe came out of his trance and realized that his brother was at his side, staring at Maryam as if he was thinking and feeling exactly what Dikembe was. 

“They’re all here!” Uncle Matthew echoed. 

Dikembe made his way over to them, following on their father’s heels. 

A moment later, he found himself looking down on his first dead body, and looked away hurriedly.  Siya had been wiser, and held back, and Dikembe found himself staring at his brother. 

Siya raised his brows, asking, and Dikembe shook his head, answering.  All dead…

The four rangers who were guarding the elephant herd were all here, lying close together with their horses.  They had been shot from the sky as they rode, some of them still lying against their horse’s backs where man and animal had fallen together.  The shots from the sky that had ripped holes into the elephants had almost torn the men apart, so that they were nearly unrecognisable.  He knew they were rangers only by their uniforms. 

Military-trained, their duty was to guard the elephants against poachers.  Umbutu had just one herd of elephants left, just one, and the game rangers had tough Nooitgedacht horses and assault rifles and orders to shoot poachers on sight.  They were trained, and they were dedicated.  But none of their bravery had helped them. 

“They don’t discriminate between animals and people,” Uncle Mulumba said.  “They shot them all down together.” 

“This…” the War Elephant said, his deep bass voice a rumble of anger.  “This is _personal._ These are _my_ elephants.  _Mine!_ ”

“This was an attack on all of us, _bwana,_ ” _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “These elephants are the elephants of all the B’Umbutu.” 

“We will have our revenge soon,” Uncle Matthew said.  “Can you hear that?” 

A low hum was coming from the horizon, and Dikembe and Siya turned as one to track the sound.  It was the rumble of hundreds of aircraft, coming to the attack.  Dikembe stood open-mouthed, watching.  There were more aircraft in the sky than he had imagined in the whole world. 

Aircraft from all over Africa were converging on the ship.  Wing after wing, squadron after squadron, the lines of war planes flew overhead, layer on layer against the high cirrus clouds like flights of arrows.    It was the combined air forces of a whole continent. 

It was the biggest aerial attack ever mounted in the history of the world.  

It achieved nothing.

The same fast aircraft that they had seen yesterday came flying out from inside the ship.  They darted across the sky, far faster than the fighter jets, making high speed jinks and turns.  The dog-fight in the sky was a weave of contrails and puffs of smoke, multilayered, up and up into the sky.  The thunder of gunfire hammered the earth, echoing like drums. 

Dikembe watched, thrilled, until his neck was aching, but he could see how inadequate the fighter jets were against the alien craft, and his feeling of exhilaration dropped lower and lower with every ball of fire.  The fighter jets were fast, and they were shooting, but their shots were splashing uselessly against globes of bright blue and green.  The alien craft were untouched, but they were spitting flashes of green light, and every jet touched by those flashes exploded in a cloud of flame and drifting smoke, tumbling to the earth. 

They were hopelessly outclassed.  Even those slick fighter jets with their huge engines were outclassed by the aliens.  They were helpless; achieving as little against the aliens as if they were throwing spears at them. 

 _This_ must be how his ancestors had felt over a century ago, he realized, watching their _askari_ batallions destroyed by the British and the Belgian repeating rifles, watching how uselessly their warriors died, watching the loss of their country to a foreign force…

He felt sick.

 He tracked each jet with his eyes, hoping that one of them, just one, would score a hit against an alien, but one at a time, every one of them was tracked by an alien and caught a salvo of green fire.  Each and every one went down, one by one, until there were only a couple of fighters left in the sky. 

The crash happened so fast Dikembe was never sure if he was remembering what happened, or telling himself what happened.    

The alien craft swung away from shooting down an oncoming fighter, and jinked straight into the path of another fighter already falling down on top of it from above.  The jet slammed down onto the alien, and they burst into a ball of fire.  The tangle of burning wreckage plunged out of the sky toward the earth, almost on top of where the B’Umbutu were watching.    

“We got one, we got one!” Dikembe screamed, pointing.   

He and Siya were running before they heard their father shouting.  The two wrecked planes had hit the ground together, not far downhill.  There was a column of smoke from just the other side of the hill, and they sprinted over the crest. 

A long rumpled skid mark of soot and torn earth terminated in a lump of steel.  Fancy alien shields or not, metal was metal.  Metal slamming into the ground at that speed crumpled like tin foil.  Steam or smoke was rising from inside it, and smell of electrical fire bit at the back of his throat.   

 _“No-one_ could have survived that!” Jean-Baptiste shouted.  “Come on!  Let’s go see what an alien looks like!” 

“Follow me!” Dikembe said.  He grabbed the knife from his belt.  “If it survived that it won’t survive me!”

They ran downhill toward the wreckage. 

There was smouldering steel, ripped like scraps of canvas, scattered in the tall grass, but they trotted a path around whatever looked hot. 

There was not enough of the fighter jet left to identify, but the main part of the alien craft was almost intact.   There was a hatch in one side.  The hatch was open, the interior flickering with flames.  And there was a Thing sprawled half out of the hatch, as if it had opened its hatch and tried to crawl away from a fiery death inside its own aircraft. 

“I think it’s dead,” Siyamthanda said. 

“If it’s not dead I’ll kill it!”  Dikembe said.  Neither of the others seemed to want to go any closer to the Thing.  It looked like it was rotten.  Its skin was grey and looked slimy, like an octopus, but it had limbs like a horrible ape, and a weirdly misshapen head.  Tentacles splayed out from the base of its spine.  It was so ugly, he _wanted_ to kill it.  Nothing that ugly should exist under the smiling African sun.

He gripped his knife, and walked carefully to the Thing through the wreckage.  Siya followed close behind him. 

“You’re both crazy,” Jean-Baptiste said, circumnavigating the wreckage, his lean face looking worried.  “Your father is coming!” 

“He’ll see that his sons had killed an alien!” Dikembe said.  “Siya?”

“With you, _ndugu_ Dikembe!” 

Dikembe stopped just in front of the dead Thing.  It didn’t move. 

Siyamthanda reached out with one foot, and poked the Thing with the sole of his sandal.  It didn’t move. 

 ** _“Dikembe!”_** the roar broke out.  Both twins jumped.  _“Siyamthanda!”_   Their father was coming, stalking through the brush.  He’d found them, and he didn’t look pleased.  The rest of the men were close behind him. 

“Baba!” Dikembe called.  He took a few steps away from the dead Thing.  “Look what we have found!”

“Come away from there!” the War Elephant roared.  He stamped through the first of the wreckage. 

“It’s dead, Baba!” Siya called. 

“I don’t care!  You boys, taking the forward point as if you think you are men already!   Come away from that thing!” 

“It’s dead, Baba,” Dikembe started moving through the wreckage toward his father.  “We should take it back to Mbarara so people can see what they look l –!” 

His words ran silent inside his mouth.  He saw his father suddenly stop, his eyes going wide, and the men behind him all jerked. 

Dikembe knew that something was happening behind him, even before he turned around. 

He saw Siya’s eyes meet his, and then Siya himself turned around to look behind him, moving slowly as if he didn’t really want to see what was there…

“Siya…” Dikembe said, and then the monster sprang. 

It moved so fast, there was no time to hit at it, or do anything.  It sprang at Siyamthanda on backwards jointed legs, and grabbed at him with a long wet tentacle.  It wrapped the tentacle around Siya’s throat and yanked him backwards against its sickly grey body.  Siya fell back, his eyes rolling white in his head.  His arms and legs had gone limp; only the thick tentacle around his neck held him upright against the alien’s body. 

“Siya!” the War Elephant cried out, taking a quick step forward, his hand held up as if he could wrench his elder son out of the alien’s grip. 

The alien backed away, dragging limp Siya with it.  It held him up.  His neck was being twisted like a chicken’s, and then Siya’s mouth opened, and a shrill  mimicry of his voice same out. 

 _“Stay-y-y … ba-ack!”_   Siya hissed. 

Dika stared at his brother.  “Siya?”  he asked, more frightened than he had ever been in his life. 

Siya’s eyes were still rolled all the way back, blindly.  His arms and legs were completely limp. 

That was not Siyamthanda, Dikembe realized.  It was Siya’s voice but it was not Siya speaking.  He could Feel it…

His mind seemed to explode as it opened wide to a whole new sensory experience.  The shock made him clamp both hands to his head with a cry.  His head felt like it was exploding.  He pressed his fingertips into his eye sockets, and stared from between his palms at the alien inside his twin. 

He could Feel where Siya should have been, and through that shocking new connection  he could Feel something inside Siya.  He could Feel something that wasn’t Siya where Siya should have been, something that wasn’t human, something cold and sticky and evil…

The alien Felt him, and he Felt its attention turn to him. 

 _Two the same?_ it thought.  _Why two of you?  How are you seeing me?_  It tried to reach out through Siya and Feel him. 

Dikembe lashed out, furious and disgusted.  The alien flinched away, but it was taken by surprise by his attack, and Siya was a bridge.  Dikembe stabbed deep into the alien’s Feelings.  He ripped at it, trying to free Siya, and pierced deep into the alien’s mind. 

The alien yanked itself away from his attack. 

 _“Stay-y-y … Ba-ack!”_ not-Siya hissed. 

“Siya?” their father said.

“That’s not Siya!” Dika said.  He felt his knees wobble under him, and he collapsed to the ground.  “It’s using Siya to talk through him!  I can feel it!  That’s not Siya!” 

The War Elephant took a firm step forward.  “What do you want?” he asked, in his most polished English. 

The alien, through Siya, replied in flawless B’Umbutu.   _“Everything…”_ not-Siya’s voice hissed.  His eyes were still rolled blindly up, but Dika could feel his twin thrashing, trying to fight for control of his own brain. 

“I want you to give me my son back,” the War Elephant said.  “And then we can negotiate.  From a position of… trust.” 

Dikembe realized that they were surrounded by guns, pointing at the alien.  Every man in the War Elephant’s council had unshouldered his weapon.  The game ranger was pointing a high-powered hunting rifle.  _Mzee_ Mulumba was aiming his spear, raised high over his shoulder ready to strike.  They were at the centre of the drama: Dikembe on the ground, Siya and the alien pressed close together, in the heart of the wreckage. 

He could feel the alien look around at the odds against it. 

 _“I will give him back when I get to my ship,”_ it said through Siya’s mouth. 

“Where is that?” 

 _“The leg,”_ not-Siya hissed.  “ _We go to the leg…”_

Dikembe caught a visual image of a sally-port built into the legs of the ship.  The sally-port gave ground-level access to the inside of the hull.  The alien would go there, and there it would let Siya go. 

But he also had a window into its thoughts through Siya.  The alien was tied to Siya for as long as it used him.  It could not hide its mind from Siya, and it could not separate Siya from Dikembe.  It _would_ let Siya go.  It would throw Siya aside, and then it would kill them all, and infantry would pour from inside the ship to help it.  It was already feeling satisfied, it was already anticipating the deaths of the gullible humans, fooled by their own sentimentality. 

“It’s lying,” he cried out.  “Baba, don’t listen, it’s going to kill Siya!” 

He Felt the rage of the alien turn to him. 

“How do you know, Dika?” his father shouted. 

“I can feel its thoughts through Siya!” Dikembe shouted.  “It’s going to kill him, no matter what you do!”

The alien was furious at being caught.  He Felt its decision change, he Felt its rage overflow, and knew what it was going to do. 

 _“Shoot it!”_ Dika screamed, lashing out at the men with his mind, trying to reach them with his urgency.   

The alien flung Siya aside like a rag doll, and unleashed a storm of telepathy.  Dikembe felt its rage lash out with full fury.  A blast of fiery hatred and ruin roared out from its mind like a pressure wave. 

Dikembe Felt it wash over and around him.  He Felt its force, but he was protected.  Siya had been linked to the alien.  Siya had taken the full force of the telepathic storm instead of Dika.  Siya had soaked up the damage, and now Siya was dying. 

Dika felt his mind crumbling, overturned, overwhelmed. He was tumbling headlong into another species, dragged by Siya.  He was falling into darkness, and Siya was falling ahead of him, and Siya was dying.  His mind was shattered. 

_… Siya! …_

Dika felt Siya rouse for an instant, long enough to recognise Dika with his last scrap of consciousness, just long enough to know that he was dragging his twin down with him, and then Siya cut the cord between them. 

Dika surfaced to the sunshine, gasping, as if he’d been choking.  He was lying on his back, and gunfire was raging over his head. 

Men were opening fire, blasting the alien.  Bullets were lashing over his head, but they were zinging and ricocheting, and Dikembe rolled on the ground.  There were flashes and splashes of brilliant blue light all around him.  The alien was cowering away from the fire, but the shields of the shattered aircraft were still up and still working and the bullets were getting nowhere.  The alien was surrounded by a wall of blue light, protecting it. 

There was a human roar, and old _mzee_ Mulumba was charging with his spear raised high over his shoulder.  The  head was a broad steel blade, washed in blood and kept razor-sharp.  Mulumba's wiry old body coiled back and snapped forward, as he had done for decades, as he had thrown a thousand spears, thousands of times, millions of times, teaching the young men of the B’Umbutu how to use the weapons of their fathers. 

The spear thunked loudly into the alien’s body, penetrating the blue shields as if they were not there. 

It thrashed, impaled by the solid steel blade.  Dikembe Felt its death scream, even though it made no sound as it bled out in the wreckage of its aircraft.  The long haft of the spear waved wildly as it tried to get the weapon out of its body, and then went still. 

The gunfire stopped. 

“Bwana!” someone shouted, and there was a general charge toward the fallen War Elephant. 

Dikembe threw up.  He was shaking all over.  He felt hands on his shoulders, but he could not open his eyes. 

Siya was dead.  A touch at the back of his mind that had always been there was gone.  He’d known Siya, loved Siya since before they were born.  Siya was part of his soul, and now that part of his soul was gone forever.  Siya was gone. 

He threw up, again, until his stomach was empty.  

“Dikembe,” he heard his name, and recognised Jean-Baptiste’s voice at last. 

He leaned back onto his haunches, wiping his mouth with hands that shook.  His skin felt cold and wet.   He looked up at Jean-Baptiste’s face, and realized that he could Feel Jean-Baptiste. 

He Felt Jean-Baptiste’s surprise.  “How are you doing that?” Jean-Baptiste asked. 

“I don’t know,” Dikembe said.  “The Locust showed me.  My father!  I must go to my father!”

“Come!” Jean-Baptiste said, and reached down a hand to pull him to his feet. 

Dikembe turned around. 

His eyes skated quickly over Siya’s body, surrounded by men trying to wake him.  They would not succeed.  Siya was dead; gone forever.  He didn’t want to look at Siya.  He didn’t want to go any closer to him, and Feel the absence of his twin in his body.  His mind reeled away from the thought.  He looked around for his father instead. 

Ekekiel Umbutu lay on his back.  There were men around him, too.  They were crouched over the War Elephant, shaking his shoulder, calling his name and his titles.  Dikembe walked over, and they parted for him. 

“Baba?” he asked, and knelt at his father’s side.  “Baba?”  He touched his father’s chest, his cheek, but he knew there would be no response.  He could Feel nothing inside him.  His father’s mind was gone.  There was nothing there to Feel. 

The fire storm of telepathy that the alien had launched at them had struck his father’s mind down.  Dikembe would have been the same, if Siya had not absorbed most of the storm.  His father was breathing, and his heart was beating, but the man Ezekiel Umbutu had been was already dead. 

Dead!  Both dead!  Dikembe stood up. 

He turned.  He could Feel Jean-Baptiste, and the others.  He could Feel them within himself, as echoes of their feelings.  He could Feel the age in his joints and his back, and realized he could Feel _mzee_ Mulumba.  He quickly Felt for the difference between what was his and what was Mulumba’s, and quickly put a wall up between them. 

He could Feel them.  He could Feel all of the humans around him, all of them. 

And he could Feel the Locusts in their ship.  Cold and hungry,  a knot of grey slimy minds, woven together in a web of telepathy.  If he pulled apart the strands of thought from the people around him, poking and probing between his own thoughts for what was human and what was not, he could feel alien thoughts that did not belong there.  

He put up a wall against them too, disgusted.  He opened his eyes, surprised that he had closed them. 

“How did you do that?”  Jean-Baptiste asked, staring at him. 

“I don’t know,” Dikembe admitted.  “But you Felt it?”

“We all felt it,” Uncle Othiambo said, looking at him strangely. 

“That’s how the Locusts talk,” Dikembe said.  “They don’t talk with words like we do.  They talk with thoughts.”  He turned to look at the ship, but it was hidden behind trees. 

“We need to move,” he said.  “Before their soldiers come out.” 

“We need to see if we can get anything useful out of this wreckage,” Uncle Matthew said. 

“No!” Dikembe looked at him, and directed the Feeling of command at him.  “We must go as fast as we can!  We must get away from this place, before other Locusts come to look for this own!”  He filled his Feeling with command, certainty, and strength. 

“You’re not a man yet,” Uncle Matthew said.  “You’re not fit to give orders to men!” 

“Yes, he can,” _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “Ahh, yes.  In the year 1833, it was.  The eldest son of the War Elephant was killed in battle with his father.  The Bunyoro celebrated, because they thought they had destroyed the royal line.  All that were left were aunts, and a grandson, no more than eight years old.  But the Bunyoro celebrated too soon.  The drums were beaten, the spears were polished, and the title passed to the grandson.  The boy was made War Elephant.  There is tradition.  There is _precedent._ Yes, I remember my grandmother telling me this.”  He sucked his teeth and nodded his head. 

“The boy is not War Elephant, because the War Elephant is still alive,” Uncle Othiamba pointed out. 

“I know what to do!”  Dikembe insisted, interrupting them both.  “Listen to me!  I know what the Locusts are going to do next!  I saw them!”

“What do you mean, you saw them?” 

“I saw them through Siya!” Dikembe insisted.  “It opened itself to Siya, and I saw what its plans are through him before it could stop me.  I know what they are.  I know what they do!  They’re pests – parasites – invaders like we have never seen before!” 

“We have been colonised before,” _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “We survived the Europeans, we will survive the Locusts.” 

“Not like this!” Dikembe said.  “The Europeans invaded, but the Europeans managed to convince themselves they came here for our own good!  The Locusts _don’t care what history will think of them!_   They aren’t here to colonise us.  They’re here to kill us.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw through that one’s eyes!  This is what they do!  They land on a world, and they strip it of everything they can use, and then they move on!  That’s how they live – and Earth is next!”

“How do you know?” Uncle Othiamba repeated. 

Through Siya he’d had a glimpse of the alien’s history, the collective minds of a whole species.  There weren’t words to describe it, so he didn’t.  What he’d Felt through Siya’s link to the dead Locust pilot would never fit into mere words.  He just reached out for all their minds together, and Felt it at them. 

He saw them stagger as they Felt the impressions he was pressing into their minds…

The Locusts would kill every living thing in the world, and grind it all down to feed the plants in their ships.  All life on Earth was mere fertilizer to them.  Humans, elephants, the fish in the sea, all plants, all animals, all ground down together into  soup.  The Locusts would extract all the water from the planet, all the air, all the metal in the earth’s core.  They would rip the Earth apart, and then they would abandon it as a broken hulk, to orbit the sun forever, dead and empty and forgotten. 

And they had done it before.  They had done it on a thousand planets.  Ten thousand – millions.   Inhabited or not, the Locusts did not care, as long as there was oxygen and water and metal.  Some planets had been defended, but the Locusts had never been defeated.  Earth was finished.  It was just a matter of time. 

Uncle Matthew staggered back, and sat down hard, crushing the grass. 

“All that I saw through the alien’s mind,” Dikembe said, despair in his voice.  “They are not here to colonise.  They’re going to strip the whole planet.  All of humanity is going to die together… this is the end.” 

“Then what do we do?”  Uncle Matthew cried out. 

“There is nothing we _can_ do.” 

“We fight them!” _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “If we die, we will die fighting.”

“But we will still die,” Dikembe said.    

“An aircraft is coming!” someone shouted, pointing. 

Dikembe whirled. 

A tiny dot was moving, skimming over the treetops. 

“It’s coming from the ship!” someone else called, from the circle around Dikembe. 

Dikembe could already Feel the mind of the Locust inside.  It was coming to investigate the crashed alien craft, to see if the pilot was alive, to see if the craft could be repaired. 

He backed away.  Terror filled his veins like water, and he realized he was Feeling the fear of every single person around him.  They were exposed here in the open field.    No cover in the long grass, nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.  They were doomed…

“Run, it’s coming here!”  Uncle Thomas screamed.  He turned to bolt, and a few others started to run with him. 

 _“NO!”_ Dikembe howled, at the top of his voice.  He bolstered his voice with Feeling.  He Felt his order so forcefully that Uncle Thomas almost fell over.  “If you run, it’ll shoot you, like it shot all the elephants!” 

“We have to get out of here!” 

 _“NO!_ Stand still!  I have an idea!” 

“There’s no time!”  The alien craft was approaching fast. 

“No!”  Dikembe shouted.  “I have an idea!  Everyone, sit down!  Look at the ground!  Don’t look at the alien!” 

“What?”  Jean-Baptiste asked, shocked. 

“We can _tell_ it we’re not here!  Stare at the ground, and don’t look up, whatever you do!”  

He followed his own advice.  He turned and looked away from the aircraft.  He threw himself down on the hot sand, and bent his back over so that the ground filled his vision, and nothing but the ground.  He Felt at them what he was doing, and he Felt the understanding come back. 

“Trust me!” he shouted.  “Look down!  We can tell it we’re not here!” 

“The boy’s right,” Uncle Matthew said.  “Down!  Everyone!  Lie in the grass!  Hide in plain sight!  Get down!” 

Dikembe focused on the soil.  He stared at the roots of the grass, at a tiny insect crawling over the grains.  He thought about the heat of the sand, baked under the tropical sun.  He thought about the long grass that hid him on all sides.   

He Felt the alien craft arrive, and heard the hum of its engines.  It was overhead, hovering effortlessly.  A shadow flicked through the blades of grass, and moved on. 

He Felt up, gently, and touched the pilot’s mind. 

_… There is nothing here…_

_… hot soil, and grass brushed by the breeze…_

_… the craft crashed in a collision…_

_… the pilot was killed by the two humans lying dead near to it…_

Humans were not here.  Only hot soil, and the ancient breeze over the Great Rift Valley…

He could Feel the thoughts of the others around him, staring doggedly down at the ground.  He could Feel doubt, and terror, and somebody’s loose bowels, but he could fold those Feelings down inside himself so that no trace of it leaked to the alien above.  To the alien, he Felt only the heat, the grass, and the soil.  He stared down at the ground, and filled its mind only with the pattern of the soil, the wind in the lush grass, the smell of the good earth. 

And quite suddenly, he Felt other human minds join his.  Jean-Baptiste came first, projecting the vision of the grass with him.  And then Uncle Matthew joined the vision, and Uncle Mulumba, and then one after the other all of them joined him.  Their Feelings were raised together like a shield, projecting a false vision into the alien’s mind over. 

The B’Umbutu were not here.  They were part of the soil of Africa.  They were everywhere, and they were nowhere, and they were indivisible. 

He Felt the alien looking around the crash site. The aircraft had crashed in a collision with a human craft, and the pilot was dead. The pilot had been killed by these two dead humans, but it had killed them in return. The craft was shattered beyond repair, but salvage for scrap could wait. 

The craft flew away. 

When the hum of the engine faded away, Dikembe let the vision fall apart.  He Felt the others do the same.  He stood up, seeing the others rise up from the long grass on all sides. 

The alien craft was already a dot in the distance.  As he looked at it, it arched close to the glowing column of light, and disappeared into the hull of the ship. 

“It’s gone!” Jean-Baptiste said.  “It didn’t see us!” 

“ _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu…” mzee_ Mulumba recited the War Elephant’s favourite saying.  “A person is a person through other people…” 

“They rely too much on their Feelings,” Dikembe said.  “We told it we were the soil, and it believed us.”

“How did you know?” 

“I didn’t,” Dikembe admitted.  “I just guessed.  They use their Feelings like we use our voices.  I guessed that its Feeling could play tricks on it, the way our eyes can play tricks on _us.  And_ there didn’t seem to be any better plan.  _And_ it worked, anyway, so it ended well.” 

He turned around, and looked at the men around him.  He could Feel something else now, rising from their minds.  He could Feel respect, tinged with astonishment.  He was young, but he was the son of Ezekiel Umbutu, descended from warrior kings. 

“Spoken like a true War Elephant,” Uncle Matthew spoke for them all, nodding his head.  “Wars cannot be fought without taking risks.” 

“Look!  The dead one is gone!”  Uncle Thomas said, pointing.  “It took its dead with it!” 

 _“With_ my spear!” _mzee_ Mulumba complained, insulted. 

“We need to do the same,” Dikembe said.  He looked at the War Elephant, still lying on his back, his head pillowed on someone’s knapsack.  “We should go, and bear the warning.” 

He couldn’t bring himself to look at Siyamthanda’s body.  Not yet.  He couldn’t bear to look at it.  He could not Feel Siya’s presence, but if he didn’t look at his body then he could pretend that Siya was alive but merely … somewhere else.  If he looked at Siya’s body, then he would have to acknowledge that all that remained of Siya was right there. 

“Bring my father,” he ordered, hoping that he would be obeyed.  “And … and my brother.  We need to go.  There is nothing more we can do here.” 

“Then what do we do?”  Jean-Baptiste cried out.  “Where can we run to?  We have nowhere to hide, no-one to save us.  The Locusts have _never_ been defeated.”

“Then we go down _fighting!”_ _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “We are the B’Umbutu!  Our fathers were kings!  Our ancestors were _gods!_   We fight until we cannot!  We do not surrender.”

“But how can we fight,” Jean-Baptiste asked, “when the enemy has space ships and glowing green rifles, and we have nothing?  What do we fight with?  What weapons have we that can stand against theirs?  ” 

Nobody had any answer to that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Real life happened, couldn't post sooner.


	3. Chapter 3

**4 July**

It was beginning to sink in to Dikembe’s mind that he really _was_ the War Elephant now.  His father was not going to wake up.  Everyone who could Feel – which was almost everyone now, and more all the time  – knew that Ezekiel Umbutu was dying. 

It was also beginning to sink in that he was _not_ only War Elephant in title.  All the Umbutu were learning to Feel, but no-one had such a connection to the Locusts as Dikembe did.  He could do what no-one else could do. He had a duty to do, whether he felt ready for it or not. 

The small village, with its concentric rings of huts and its thorn-bush kraals, was now the heart of the war effort.  It took time to mobilise an army to move, but the armies of Central Africa were coming.  Uganda had commandeered every truck in Kampala and packed off every soldier who mustered toward Umbutu.  Even the militias of Rwanda and Zaire coming to the fight: Hutu and Tutsi marching together for the first time in years.  The first soldiers were already setting up camp outside the village, where just two days ago cattle had grazed. 

The ability to Feel each other changed everything. Feeling was flooding through the Great Lakes area, from home to home, village to village, mind to mind. It was like suddenly discovering sight after being blindfolded one’s whole life. The people had never known that Feeling was possible, but once one knew how to Feel, one could reach out and Feel others and pass the gift along. Not everyone had the same strength - in fact a small unlucky few could not Feel at all. But already Dikembe could Feel the echoes of thousands of minds, stretching further and further away.

They were even learning to use Feeling as a weapon.  If the Locusts saw the gathering army, they would move to wipe it out.  Dikembe had pulled together a team of the sharpest Feelings he could find, so that whenever an alien craft flew overhead, it saw only what they wanted it to see.  The village was abandoned and empty.  The trucks on the roads, the soldiers – they were not there. 

* * *

 

Dikembe sat outside in the afternoon sun, in the kraal of the village, on the largest carved stool they had been able to find for the new War Elephant.  He was surrounded not only by his father’s councillors, and by the generals of the two militaries that had already arrived – but also with the strongest minds that he had Felt so far.  Traditionally, councils in the village kraal were B’Umbutu only, and male-only, but this council had five women and four foreigners as well as the B'Umbutu. Some where here for their rank, but others were here because of the strength of their Feelings. 

They were all different, here.  Male and female, old and young, B’Umbutu and foreign.  But next to the aliens, all the differences between them were as thin as onion skin.  No sex differences, no tribal or clan differences were ever as wide as the difference between them, and the Locusts. 

 _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu,_ his father taught him; a person is a person through other people.  He had never truly understood that saying before now, but now he could Feel the truth of it echoing from the people in the kraal. 

“I have asked my friends,” Dikembe nodded to the young women, “sending their minds into the ship, exploring the inside.  We have a map of the ship  now, of where the guns are, and where all the ground ports are.  There are about twelve thousand aliens in there – crew, and ground soldiers.  And they’re led by a captain, bigger than the rest of them.” 

One of the women Felt a brief explanation of how the ship managed to hover off the ground – the Locusts had mastered all the corollaries of **E** = mc  2.   Speech was not necessary any more to descibe such complex ideas.  They were speaking aloud from habit, as much as anything else. 

“We have seen no ground troops,” _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “They are not coming out.” 

“They don’t have to come out,” General Zuluka said. "Inside their ship they are safe, and they know it.”

“So, what is happening in the rest of the world?” Dikembe asked. 

“The mothership in space has split off into over a dozen pieces, and each of them is striking cities as it goes,” the Ugandan general said.  The general Felt a picture of the globe, dotted with glaring red.  “Almost a hundred cities have been destroyed.” 

Dikembe Felt the horror echo across the room.    

“The capital cities of Europe are all gone.  Millions are dead. All organisations, gone,” the Ugandan general said.  “Aid, supplies, communications, all gone.   The AU, the UN, Nato – all are gone.  The satellites are all down.  We’re cut off.”  

“We’ve got out of this better than Europe,” Mama Alice said.  “God help those poor people.”  She crossed herself at the thought of all those dead. 

“We need help,” Uncle Matthew said.  “The Americans and the Russians have nuclear weapons.  We need a few of _those.”_  

 “The Russians and the Americans are dealing with ships of their own,” General Zuluka said, shaking his head.   “We are on our own here.  No help is coming from outside.”

 Dikembe Felt the echo of Jean-Baptiste’s sour thought.  Help had not come from outside when Rwanda tore itself apart in a storm of blood, so what was new out of Africa? 

“But _this_ ship has landed,” _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “This ship is different.  This one has to be important.”

“But there’s nothing we can do against it,” Jean-Baptiste said.  “We have no aircraft, and we can't get inside the ship.” 

Dikembe Felt them all thinking the same thing.  They were all Feeling the memory of their warplanes being shot down without bringing down a single alien in return.  They were all Feeling the same despair, watching their own forces fail so helplessly. 

“We _have_ to be able to fight them!” General Zuluka said.  “There must be something we can use – _some_ weapon that can penetrate the ship!  This cannot be the end of the B’Umbutu!  The ancestors will not allow it!” 

“The ship is shielded,” the Ugandan general said.  “And we have no aircraft.  And their ground troops are not coming out.”

“Then what do we do?” 

“There is nothing we _can_ do,” Jean-Baptiste said.  “We’ve all seen what the alien showed Dikembe.  This is the end.  It’s just a matter of time.” 

“There has to be _something_ we can do!”  Zuluka almost shouted. 

“My guns will be here in ten hours,” the Ugandan said. “Tanks and artillery.  And the Rwandans will be here by then too.  And the Congolese won’t be far behind them.”

“And they won’t be able to penetrate the shields any better than the aircraft did,” Jean-Baptiste pointed out. 

“If anyone has any ideas?” Dikembe asked, looking around at them all. 

Someone was coming through the thorn walls of the kraal, to the inner circle where the council were sitting. 

“Maurice?” Mama Alice recognised him first.  

“My uncle sent me with news!”  Maurice said. 

Dikembe was getting used to the sensation of meeting someone new, and Feeling them for the first time.  There was always the same reaction; a surprised jerk back away from him, and puzzlement, and then understanding. 

Maurice was four years older than Dikembe and Siyamthanda.  He had tried to bully Siya once, and Dika had jumped on his back to defend his twin.  Maurice still had the little scar on his cheek from the stone Dikembe had hit him with. 

For a moment, it dawned on him all over again that Siya was dead.  He felt grief clutch tightly at his heart, but he forced his grief down.  Not now. 

He looked at Maurice, and he could Feel Maurice.  He could Feel Maurice’s strength, his loyalty, his bravery.  And a moment later, he realized that Maurice could Feel him, too – could Feel Dika’s grief.  They could Feel each other, and he felt Maurice’s toughness and loyalty rising to meet Dikembe’s need. 

“What’s wrong?”  Dikembe asked.  The exchange between them had taken only a tiny fraction of a second; no-one else would have Felt it.  

“We have had a radio call from the Americans!” Maurice said.  “Using old fashioned Morse code!” 

“The Americans?”

“It’s crazy.  They say they want to organize a counter attack!”

 _“What?_ ”  General Zuluka blurted.  “When?  How?” 

“In thirteen hours,” Maurice said.  “They say they have a way to shut down the shields – and then we must all strike at the same time, with every plane that can still fly! 

“Strike?”  one of the Ugandans asked.  “With what?  We have no more aircraft!” 

But Maurice knew very little.  He Felt at them an image of the plan, but all he could send them was a picture of the scrap of paper on which his uncle had scribbled the Morse Code, and his rising excitement at the idea of fighting back. The Americans hadn't sent details of how they were going to cause the shields to shut down.  

“Surely there must be something we can do?” Dikembe said.  He turned to face General Zuluka, aware that everyone was looking at him.  Everyone was looking at _him_ now, the way they had all looked at his father once.  He Felt his question at General Zuluka.   

“There’s nothing,” General Zuluka spoke verbally.  “Every plane that could fly was shot down already.  We have nothing left.” 

“There must be something we can do!” 

“There is nothing.  Without aircraft we cannot strike the ship.” 

“Tell the Americans we can’t fly,” Dikembe said to Maurice.  “We thank them, but we can’t take part in this counter-offensive.” 

“We are alone.”

“We have been alone before,” _mzee_ Mulumba said.  “Africa was alone for thousands of years before the Europeans and the Arabs came.  Africa is where humanity began; this is where we will fight…”

“This is where we will end,” Jean-Baptiste said, and his voice was so quiet Dikembe almost didn’t hear it. 

 

* * *

 

After the meeting broke up, Dikembe walked out of the kraal.  He went into the house that had belonged once to the senior wife of this village’s headman.  His father – still breathing and still legally the War Elephant – was lying there unconscious. 

Dikembe walked into the little house, and waited for his eyes to adjust.  He could see the outline of his father in the near darkness, lying on a low bed. 

A moment later he noticed his sister Nangoma, sitting in the darkness just beyond his father’s pillow.  She had been withholding her Feeling from him, avoiding the touch of his mind. 

There was nothing to say. They sat and looked at their father.  Dikembe found himself watching for movement, a sign that his father was coming back, even though his Feeling told him he would not.  He reached out his hand, and held it over his father’s lips, feeling his breath.  He was alive, in a way. They were going to take him back to Mbarara as soon as they had transport, so that he could be moved into a proper hospital.  Their father was gone, but neither of them wanted to let him die. 

Just as neither of them wanted to talk about Siyamthanda. 

“Did you hear the meeting?” Dikembe asked.  “The Americans are planning a counter offensive.” 

“I heard,” Nangoma agreed. 

“But there’s nothing we can do here.  We don’t have aircraft.  There’s no way to get inside the ships.  It’s hopeless.”

“So you think this is it?” Nangoma said.  “You think this is the end of the world?” 

“It is.” 

“You sound like Jean-Baptiste.” 

“Jean-Baptiste has already _seen_ the world end once.  Nobody came to save Rwanda.  Nobody will come to save us.”  

“I think you’re wrong.” 

“I know.”

He understood now his prickly relationship with his sister.  Nangoma was older than he was, but she was only a girl.  Love was mingled with bitter resentment that her younger brothers were boys, while she, the eldest, had to be a girl.  He was not yet a man, but Nangoma _never_ would be, and that stung. 

That was something that _he_ was going to change, Dikembe decided.  _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu…_ girls were just as human as men were.  Really, people were people, inside.  Girls didn’t choose to be born girls, and it was ridiculous for other people to treat them as if they had.   

He sat down opposite her, with their father unconscious between them.  For a moment they just sat there.  Their father breathed quietly between them. 

“Do you mean that?”  Nangoma asked. 

“Yes.”  Dikembe nodded.  “Yes, I do.  _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu…”_

“A person is a person through other people,” Nangoma quoted their father, a sorrowful smile on her face.  It wasn’t even an Umbutan saying, but their father said it so often he had made it his own. 

“That has never meant so much to me before,” Dikembe said.  “The Locusts have brought us a great gift.  Even if they wipe us out, they can never take _that_ away from us.  _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu._  We know what it means now.  We can never go back to being divided.   All those old divisions - sex, age, clan, tribe - none of that matters any more.  Even if we all go down, we’ll go down as one people, all of us.” 

“There are still barriers between us.” 

“Yes, there are,” Dikembe said.  “Like there are barriers between us two.  But _we’re_ not Locusts.  We have separate minds.  Without that, we would have no art, no music, no stories, like they have none.”

“They don’t tell stories?” 

“They don’t have separate minds.  They can’t even _lie_ to each other.  What one of them knows, every one in range will …”  Dikembe straightened his spine, and stared at his sister.  “Wait.  Wait.” 

“What?” 

The idea was as ephemeral as a soap bubble.  “I think I have an idea.  I think I know how to fight them.”

“What?  How?” 

He opened his mind to Nangoma, and as soon as she Felt his idea, she seized it, and his vague idea became less ephemeral.  “We don’t _need_ to get inside their ship,” she said.  “Because a person is a person through other people.” 

The alien pilot had not hidden its intentions.  It hadn't hidden what it wanted.  Either it was so arrogant that it didn’t care, or – and this Dikembe believed – it didn’t know _how_.  The Locusts’ lives were based on their telepathy.  Their society depended  on _everyone_ knowing _everything_ at the same time… 

But the Locusts couldn’t raise walls in their minds from each other.  The alien pilot had tried to keep Siya’s mind out, but it could not. 

“I think it’ll work!” Dikembe said. 

He had pushed his idea out into the rest of the village at the same time.  He could Feel the ripples of his idea spreading beyond this little house.  As the ripples spread out, he felt each one of his team adding their own thought.  They built the idea up between them, tugging and testing it, until all its weaknesses had been sponged out and they all knew what to do.    

“We must wait, and time our attack to coincide with the Americans’ strike,” Dikembe decided.   "That way, the Locusts will think our attack is part of the same attack.” 

He felt Maurice and Jean-Baptiste approaching, even before Maurice spoke.  “What about the Americans?” Maurice asked.   “We should tell them what we’re doing.” 

“No need.  If _we’re_ using the aliens’ telepathy against them, _they_ must be doing it too.  They're not stupid.” 

* * *

 

The people used the hours well.  The generals moved their troops around, preparing for the assault. They had thirteen hours to get into place - but with every unit able to Feel every other, that was all the time they needed.  

When the time came, Dikembe and his team moved inside the gate of the Reserve.  They could see the ship in the distance, looming like a mountain range, but close enough to Feel.  They chose a stretch of grass, and sat down in a circle. 

Mama Alice sat opposite him.  Uncle Mulumba sat down awkwardly next to her, his old legs stretched out straight.   Jean-Baptiste was on Dikembe’s right, and Nangoma was on his left.  There was no precedent to follow in what they were doing.  Nobody had ever done anything like this before, so Dikembe might as well start some new traditions from today. 

“It’s time,” Dikembe said, deciding to begin without delay.  “It has been thirteen hours.  Now, what sort of plane will we send?"  

They chose a fighter jet that they had all seen flying yesterday.  They discussed it, sharing the images around them, until they all had a good grasp on the plane.

And then they sent the aircraft that was not into the air.  It sliced through the sky  toward the unprotected alien ship.  Jean-Baptiste took the trouble to give it a shadow, bounding across the savannah.  Their plane flew under the looming bow of the ship, skimming the ground, and then it went into a steep climb.  Pulling up, sharp nose aimed like an arrow at the great gaping mouth of the ship’s main weapon port… 

The Locusts saw the attack coming, and they were ready.  They opened fire on the lone aircraft.  Guns aimed at the oncoming plane, lashing out with green fire, but the plane that wasn’t kept coming.  It arced like an arrow under the belly of the ship, immune to all weaponry, unstoppable.  It sped for the yawning weapon port like a lance…

At that point they let the illusion drop. 

“Good job, everyone!” Dikembe said.  “But the fight is not won yet!” 

The plane would have vanished, to the aliens.  The plane that was not there was suddenly … not there.  The alien mind was enough like humans’ own that an inexplicable disappearance would startle them.  The break in continuity had to be filled with something else.  Dikembe Umbutu would give them something else to think about.

“Bomb,” he whispered aloud, and the word was taken up by the rest of the circle. 

“Bomb…” they whispered.  “Bomb…” 

_…Bomb…_

_…Bomb inside the ship.  Bomb inside the hull.  Bomb inside the main armament._

The ship was going to blow up.  The ship was going to explode – rivers of fire through every crevice in the hull.  Fire blooming from every port.  The legs would collapse under it.  Everyone in the ship would be instantly crushed.  He imagined the flash of heat from the hellfire of the burning ship, and pushed the flush of warmth delicately across a thousand alien skins. 

_…Bomb in the ship…_

A bomb was inside the hull.  A bomb in the safe darkness; hidden, ticking.

 _…Flee…_  Dikembe felt the aliens pass the message among themselves.  He hid himself inside a cloud of alien confusion, and watched. 

… _Flee!  Run!  Evacuate!  Abandon the ship!..._

Jean-Baptiste added his own tinge of regret to his feelings.  The ship, the dark ship, the warm ship, the safe ship.  The ship was home.  Home was safety.  To abandon their home was tragic.  But home was doomed.  Their home would destroy them.  If they stayed in the ship, their home would be their grave. 

_… Flee!..._

Dikembe could see flashing warning lights, hear sirens crying desperately.  They were  jostling and bumping in the narrow access corridors in the legs of the ship.  They were  hurrying to get out. 

“Get ready,” Dikembe said aloud, without opening his eyes.  He put up a wall between his circle of warriors, and reached out to Feel the commanders of the Ugandan, Rwandan and Umbutan armies.  He Felt his commands at the generals directly.  “They are coming out.  Hold your fire until they are all out.  Tell your soldiers to wait for the drums.  Wait for the drums…” 

They didn’t know where they were going, but they were going, and hurrying.  The ship was dead, inert.  And it was a trap.  He caught a glimpse of a thought, but by the time he had focused on it the idea was gone, whisped away.  They had something to hide; something to fight for; something that had to be evacuated from the ship and kept safe at all costs.

“Wait for it.” 

He felt the aliens pouring out.  Transporters unlatched from the sides of the ship, stuffed with crew.  They trundled over the ground, racing to hide themselves in the thick forests.  Platoons, companies of infantry, braced behind their weapons. 

“Wait…” 

He could feel the air on thousands of tentacles; the warm breeze of Africa.  He could feel grit under many, many palps.  Gritty African soil.  Only a few eyes still saw the darkness inside the ship.  He could feel a surge of discomfort at the brilliance of the sun, and squeezed his eyelids tighter against burning retinas not his own. 

The aliens had left their ship. 

He received an impression from General Zuluka.  The aliens were moving in formation, leaving the ship.  They were trying to escape to the mountain forests of Rwanda,  exactly where Dikembe had predicted they would. 

The ship was shut down, inert.  Dikembe lifted his mind lightly, drifting like a dust mote.  He floated from mind to mind, until he found the last alien eyes whose vision still saw darkness.  The captain of the ship was leaving its command.  He watched, barely a feather of thought, as the alien captain moved its claws over the keypad – and the ship’s external ports were locked.  The humans wouldn’t get in there easily, but neither would the ship’s crew. 

 _“Now!”_   Dikembe shouted aloud.  “Cut them off!  Cut them off!” 

Thunder split the air, as the joint armies opened fire on the exposed alien formations. 

………………………

Dikembe climbed onto the back of the pick-up truck, and stared around him at the exhausted troops.  They were tired, but they were exhilarated.  The army bristled with weapons, from assault rifles to spears. 

Dikembe held up one hand, and Felt for quiet. 

Around him the crowd of soldiers began to fall quiet.  He looked around at their uniforms – some Ugandan, some Umbutan, some Rwandan militia, and all filthy with blood and dust and sweat.  He could Feel their tiredness, and also their bloodlust.  It was dizzying, and he restrained the urge to laugh like a madman into the sky. 

Becaue it had been a massacre. 

The Locusts had marched from their ship, and straight into an ambush.  Even with their green energy weapons, their shields, and all their technology, it was impossible to fight an enemy they could not see.  The soldiers had learned to fight in pairs.  One to shoot, one to project a telepathic shield.  The whole Rift Valley had turned into a whirlpool of running men, galloping horses, and howling Toyotas firing machine guns, and the aliens had fallen in their thousands. 

The scattered remnants of the Locust army were fleeing into the mountains.  Nearly a hundred alien tanks were still rolling, and a few thousand aliens had made it to the forests of Rwanda – but the back of their army had been broken in a single battle.  Space-faring aliens had been beaten by plain old-fashioned screaming hordes.  Strike after strike after strike, fight and win, and kill and kill and kill … 

Dikembe had silence now.  The victors around him were waiting to see what the boy who had led them knee-deep in alien blood had to say. 

“My first order as War Elephant!” Dikembe shouted. 

He pulled up a wall inside his mind too slowly, and had to wait for the roar of appreciation to fade from his head before he could speak again. 

He pointed at the pile of alien corpses, piled ten feet high. 

“Cut off their heads, and put them on spikes!  For all to see!  These are the true _inyenzi,_ the true cockroaches!  Put them on spikes for all to see.  These _Inyenzi_ can be killed, they will be killed, that the people of Africa are not afraid!  _Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu!”_

Old mzee Mulumba picked up his spear and waved it at the sky.  He opened his mouth as wide as he could, pink tongue bright against his face. 

“Ubuntu!”  he shouted, jerking the spear at each syllable.  “Ubuntu! Ubuntu!”

“This fight is not yet over!” Dikembe shouted.  “Thousands of them reached the forest!  This fight is not over till every one of them is dead.  But we can feel them!  We know where they are.  They’re tough.  They’re armed.  But we are going to wipe them out!  Because _we_ stand as _one mind!_   Because _umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu!”_

The crowd picked up the cry, and suddenly spears and gun barrels were jabbing out of the crowd.  “Ubuntu!  Ubuntuu!  U-BOON-TOOOOOO!”

Dikembe stood in the middle of the storm of noise, and raised his weapon.  He let his Feeling soar on the rising thermals of their triumph.  He could feel them all, under him, bouying him up, a thousand minds roaring against the night sky.   

 “Ubuntu!” he joined in the shout.  “Ubuntu!  Ubuntu!  Ubuntu!  Ubuntu!  We are going to win this war!” 

 

 


End file.
